


285 South/bis

by NotLeanna



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: 285 South AU, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 14:17:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19175008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotLeanna/pseuds/NotLeanna
Summary: Months before Michael and Alex’s first infamous canon encounter by his truck, Michael steals something much bigger than a guitar.When Michael discovers something that can maybe help him unravel the mystery of his past and his truck breaks down and his siblings don’t want to have anything to do with it, there’s only one thing he can do, right?Alex just happens to be there. With a lot of questions.





	285 South/bis

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone should fall in love on a road trip filled with alien abductions, motel beds to share and nosy school’s projects. Michael and Maria had their chance in episode 1x06 (285 South) of the original series, so I thought to give Michael and Alex theirs. 
> 
> (If you haven't yet, go watch 285 South it's a really good episode, especially if you love vanilla ice cream!)

Being abandoned in a cave by who-knows-who he could handle, same for be abandoned for years by what remained of his family and every human who had taken him in in the last ten years, but his truck’s desertion, that he could not bear. It was too much. Especially at a  moment like that, when he was so close to find out the truth about his presence on Earth. 

He needed a car and he needed to go to Marathon, Texas. Right now. That was the place his researches had led him to; that was the place where, somehow, was kept one of the pieces of the spaceship that had taken him to Roswell.

The obvious solution would be Max’s jeep, but no way, we’ve school tomorrow, Michael; and we need to keep quiet, not get arrested for breaking and entering, Michael; why can’t you focus on the history project like everyone else, Michael?  _ That “alien” thing is not going anywhere, we can go once we know more about it, Michael.  _

As if he weren’t as much an alien as Michael. Sure thing, he was the only alien who hadn’t find a home on Earth yet and wanted to go back. 

Well, for once Michael wasn’t going to follow Max’s lead. He was going to Texas. He was going to bring back to Roswell that  _ alien thing _ . He just needed a car.

“Guerin, where have you been? We have to work on the history project together.”

“What?” Michael didn’t skip class as much as he wanted to, because at the end of the day Max was right and college was _ a _ way to leave Roswell for good, but he had to admit that he hadn’t been in Mr. Summers class since... well, since before the teacher had apparently paired him up with Maria DeLuca for this project everyone was talking about.

“The act like a historian assignment. We have to interview each other following the list of questions Mr. Summers gave us. Does it ring any bell? Max told me he was going to tell you about it.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Michael didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, but it seemed rude to admit so, “Sorry, too busy. Do it yourself, will you? Thanks.”

“No, I won’t do it myself. Do it myself, are you crazy? What do you even have to do?” When Michael opened his mouth to answer, Maria didn’t let him. “You know what? I don’t care you’re going with me to the Crushdown and we’ll get to know each other.”

“Get to know each other?” Michael was completely at loss. Maria wasn’t usually that bad, not like Isobel’s friends anyway, but she also wasn’t one to back down and he really needed to get going right now. 

“The project, Guerin. Why can’t I have anything simple in my life?” she started to mutter to herself as she rummaged through her backpack. Michael was watching her and thinking if he could just slip away unnoticed when he saw them, car keys. “We’re going in my car, okay? There’s no way I’m getting in your truck.”

“You have a car.” Yes, she had, a rusty thing almost as old as his truck. Good, things were going good. 

“What’s the matter with you, Guerin?”

“Okay, I’ll come. I need a ride anyway.” Max was going to kill him, stealing his crush’s best friend’s car must be like number three on his list of unforgivable stupid things to do, but it was his fault, he should have taken him in the first place.

***

Stealing the keys from Maria’s bag as she talked to Liz was easy, the only problem was that their entire history class seemed to be at the Crushdown working on their interviews, Max included. And he was paired up with Valenti, the jerk, so he kept glancing up at him with a rescue plea in his puppy eyes. Well, another day, Max, today Michael was going to undercover the mystery of their existence. Isobel was busy embarrassing their brother by pestering Liz, her partner, so that was that.

As soon as everyone seemed distracted enough - meaning Max got distracted by Liz and Isobel’s bickering about ice-cream flavours - Michael sneaked out of his booth and keys in hand he headed through the door towards the car; Maria had even parked it away from the diner’s windows. Be cool, look left, look right, and he was in…

“What the hell, Guerin!” Oh, fuck. “Are you stealing Maria’s car?”

How do you answer to that? You don’t, and Michael didn’t; he looked panicked at Alex Manes for half a second, then smirked and got in, he could still save it. 

“I’m not, she asked me to… What are you doing?” Why was Alex Manes in his - Maria DeLuca’s - car?

“She didn’t ask you shit. I know what I see, Guerin.”

“I’m just borrowing it, okay? Could you tell her? Thank you.”

In hindsight, He could have handle it better. Maybe clearing up his lack of criminal intention - or trying to - before starting the car. Maybe not taking off with a classmate on the passenger seat as he was heading out of the State. Maybe.

“Are you out of your mind? Stop the car. Now.”

“Are you going to get out?”

“Not without you,” Alex said and then added, “and the car.”

“Then no.” 

In a couple of minutes they were already out of Roswell.  _ They. _ Oh, yes; he’d fucked up. Big time.

“Were you what? In the mood for stealing cars? Kidnapping people?”

Alex talked as much as Maria and Michael needed time to think. “More like abducting people,” Not making stupid alien jokes. Come on Michael, focus on get yourself out of this giant mess you made. 

“Abd… Oh, really? Because I work at the UFO Emporium? Very funny.”

“It’s on the sign,” Michael, shut up. For your own good, shut up. 

“You’ll still get arrested.” Alex said, but he took off the silver and bright green hat all the UFO Emporium employees had to wear.

“Well, I’ll deal with it when it comes to.” 

Glaring. Alex Manes was so good at glaring. It had to be the eyeliner. “Dealing with prison time? I thought you were going and being a genius at university, Guerin. Not your average criminal.”

“Oh, I’ll take average,” said Michael by reflex because being average had always been the shared goal of the three of them. But then he thought about Marathon and what might be hidden in the Texan desert and added, “for now.”

“Where are we going?” Alex’s gaze was on him, studying him, but he didn’t look angry, not as much as Michael would be if he were being kidnapped, at least. 

“Is it too much to hope for your destination to be the next gas station?”

“You do realize I have a phone and I can call the police on you or, I don’t know, call Maria instead and tell her you’re with me, her best friend, her car is safe and that you’re going to repay her for the gas and the  _ inconvenience _ , Guerin?”

“And why would you do that?” No way in hell it’d be so easy. A phone call and Alex Manes was going to clean up his ginormous fuck-up? 

“Because I'm nice?” At the moment, Alex’s tone wasn’t exactly nice, annoyed was a better  adjective to describe it. 

“Yeah, sure.”

“So, do you want me to help you or what?” Very annoyed.

Accepting help, from anyone, was something Michael wasn’t really good at. Especially if the one offering was practically a stranger, a stranger who he kwen for almost six years and had always been kind enough not to bother him, but a stranger nevertheless. What were his options here, though?

“What do you want in return?” Maybe Alex just wanted help with his schoolwork, even if he was smart and never seemed to have problem keeping up with it; or maybe he had something to fix and couldn’t afford it; or maybe he was one of those who saw him and thought that since he had been basically brought up by criminals he had to be one himself and had something illegal to ask him for, though he hoped it wasn’t the case, because Alex Manes had really always been one of the few kids in school who never treated him like the charity case he was. 

“I…” Alex hesitated and Michael felt his heart sank. “Just tell me where are you going, I need to know I’m not helping you do something stupid. More stupid.”

It was Michael’s turn to hesitate. He couldn’t tell Alex the whole story, obviously, but it was fair, wasn’t it? Still, opening up was another thing he sucked at. “Texas. I think I’ve found some sort of link to my biological family. My truck broke down and I couldn’t wait.”

“Why isn’t Max with you?” Okay, now Alex seemed more interested than willing to turn him in. Wow, now he’d always be the sad orphan with the saddest past to him. At least it also seemed he’d help, because of the pathetic orphan story, but who cared? Michael, evidently.  

“Scared. He doesn’t like this sort of things. He doesn’t want to know.”

“Oh, right, because he was adopted.”

“Yeah. Because of that.” And also because he feared torture and experiments and life in captivity and exposure and a truth to big to handle.

In the silence that followed, Alex fished his phone out of his jeans, pushed in some buttons and made a call. Oh, how he hoped it was Maria and not the Sheriff!

“Maria…” The person on the other end of the line was obviously panicking and talking so fast Alex needed a couple of tries to utter a syllable more than her name. “No, it wasn’t stolen. Your car wasn’t stolen. I know it because I’ve taken it. Yeah, I’m serious. I met Guerin and your keys were with your books… Hold on. Why did you take Maria’s things outside?” Alex was now asking him. Was he supposed to answer? Michael was completely at loss, again. Thank god Alex was not. He didn’t let him say anything and soon got back to his conversation with Maria, “he said he wanted some fresh air and went outside to think about… Yeah, about the questionnaire. Yeah, Max is right, there’s some heavy stuff in there,” Max? It seemed his brother was trying to cover up for him, good. He was so caught up in his thoughts about his siblings and their absence in that pivotal moment of their lives that he missed that Alex had stopped talking. There had been a pause in the phone conversation. A really long pause. Alex’s expression had turned serious. “I know I should have asked, Maria, I… I just wanted to get away for a bit. No, not that bad. Just normally bad. Yes, Guerin. He was there… And he seemed like he needed a break, too. Maria, I didn’t know he was your partner. Look, I’ll pay you back for the gas, okay? We’ll be back tomorrow. Will you forgive me? Of course I will, it’ll be perfect. Love you, too.” 

Alex hung up and Michael didn’t know what to say. Alex was an amazing liar, who knew he had it in him? Not Michael, he had always seen him as the kind and quiet kid who spent his time with Maria and Liz or alone in the school’s music room. Probably trying to avoid the bullies. Maybe that was the kind of normal stuff that made you a remarkable liar when you were just a human teen-ager and not a alien keeping secrets for his safety. 

He felt as if he shouldn’t have heard the last part of the phone call.  

“You owe me big, Guerin.” Alex said once it was clear Michael wasn’t going to break the silence any time in the near future. 

“I… Yeah, yeah. Of course,” mumbled a still stunned Michael, maybe he didn’t understand this new shade of Alex Manes but debt, that he knew well enough.

“Good, because I’ve just agreed to help with your History project.”

“Will you answer, too?” 

Alex offered a noncommittal shrug; all of a sudden Michael really wanted to get to know him better. 

“Favourite ice-cream flavour?” Alex started, reading the first still unanswered question. It was number two of twenty - a classic - and the first he had answered with a lie - also a classic. 

This time Michael was honest.

“Er… The one with cookies in it? Something very sugary.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Alex teased as he jotted down the other boy’s answer.

“Why? I’m a sweet guy!”

“Okay… Favourite TV show?”

“I don’t know. I don’t watch much TV.”

“Oh, come on. You’re what? Too smart for it, Guerin?”

“Sure. Also there’s only one TV at the group home and I don’t care enough to, you know, fight for the remote?” 

Talking about yourself wasn’t all that bad when you could - had to - look straight ahead in order to not cause a car crash and shit. The problem was, Alex didn’t care about that socially acceptable loophole in conversation etiquette, he still looked at him and now he was so intent he seemed his thirteen-years-old self trying to control his telekinesis. 

“Same,” Michael shoot him a confused look and the other boy explained, “older brothers.” 

“Aren’t they gone to be American heroes in some war-riddled Country or something?”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed with a shrug, “I still don’t like to spend much time at mine, though, and it was that or confessing I watch The Hills with Liz and Maria every week, so…”

“The Hills? Oh god!”

“Shut up. They make me.”

“Sure. Like Izzie makes me.”

It was so easy laughing with Alex Manes, why hadn’t they hang out before?

“Do you have a hobby?” Alex read and then double checked whether the apparently appalling question was printed on official schoolwork material for real. “Do you have a hobby? What are you doing in this class, anyway? Is Mr. Summers trying to send you off on dates? For science?” 

“Don’t ask me. I wasn’t there when he assigned us this stuff.” Was really Mr. Summers trying to pair him up with Maria DeLuca? And what about Max and Valenti? Or Isobel And Liz Ortecho? Nah, the old man just reveled in the drama he liked to orchestrate. What an interesting surprise from one of the most boring teacher in Roswell. 

“Where were you at?”

“Working on my hobby?”

“Which is?” Alex pressed at Michael’s not so subtle deflection.  

Learning anything useful to build a spaceship. Rebuilding a spaceship. “Building things.” How much of Michael was cutting around his truth and presenting a more human-digestible self.  “Or fixing them. But I don’t know if it’s a hobby. It’s not when you’re paid for it, right? Yeah, scratch that. For fun,” he said excessively slow as if dictating the answer to something very important and official. So much of him was also hiding behind jokes and sarcasm how much it hurt being smothered in secrets. “I enjoy playing the guitar.”

“Really?” Alex’s surprise was justified, Michael wasn’t involved in any of the school’s music activities, which the alien knew were something of a safe space for him, instead. Michael preferred to sneak out one of the school’s instrument and strum it somewhere he was able to breath or the whole playing thing didn’t make any sense. So, no many chances to run into each other and bond over common interests. Not until then.

“Yes. I’m not as good as you, but…” 

“How do you know I’m any good?”

“It’s your thing, right? The thing you’re known for at school?”

“I’m not really sure it’s that.” Alex muttered gloomily. Of course Michael had heard the rumors about Alex Manes, the gay kid, but being a couple of  _ the _ himself - the foster kid, even the  _ homeless _ kid for the funniest of his classmates - he usually didn’t pay attention to them, so he kept driving apparently completely unaware of Alex’s last comment. “What about you? What are known for?”

“Is it in the questionnaire?” 

Alex paged through the pages as if there were a chance that that question were among Mr. Summers’s. “No.” 

“Then I’m not answering.” Being homeless was as much car trip chat material as one’s rumored homosexuality. “I follow a no personal question policy.”

“They’re all personal questions, Guerin.” Alex laughed, shaking his head at the other’s ridiculous remark. 

“Then I won’t answer questions personally chosen by Alex Manes.”

“We’ll see,” he promised and casually browsed the questionnaire for a bit. “Favourite gummy bear?”

“The red one.”

“See, Guerin? That was mine.”

“You got me, Manes.” And so did his triumphant smile, teasing and open. Perhaps Mr. Summers was really up to something.

Never in his craziest dreams, Michael would have imagined the most important trip of his life to be like that, with someone he barely knew on the passenger seat and filled with laughter. Having Alex there made him almost forget to panic. Almost. Sometimes, more often as they got closer to their destination, his fingers would start tapping on the steering wheel out of their own will in what was an obvious nervous outlet and other times the chaos in his mind would trap him among the endless possibilities finding the spaceship piece would open up. 

Alex noticed it and started to peruse Maria’s papers as if he were cherry-picking the questions. Maybe he was leaving the  _ heavy stuff  _ Max had talked about for later, Michael thought.

“Ask away, I owe it to DeLuca.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. I won’t let you screw with my best friend’s grades and car privileges.” 

“How are you friends only with girls?” Fuck. He blurted out a fucking idiotic thing. Give it to Michael to ask the one question so stupid not even the history teacher would include in his dumb homework. 

“Girls this age are nicer,” was the carefully worded answer Alex was so kind to give him. Of course, most of their male classmates was either bullying him or ignoring him. Stupid Michael. 

“You should meet Iz,”

Alex bursted out laughing. Kind of nervous, but a laugh nevertheless. “Yeah, I always wondered how you two ended up being that close.”

How could Michael explain what Isobel meant to him? Sometimes it was hard for him to feel part of a family or, better, to feel as much a proper member of their three-way family as Max and Isobel, and how could he not, when at the end of the day it was always him who ended up alone in a place that inevitably seemed foreigner without his siblings in it? Anyway, even when he felt that way, most of the times it was Isobel who knew how to remind him he wasn’t alone in this world, much more than Max and his guilt-ridden looks.

“She gives the best hugs,” what was wrong with him? Why was he talking about hugs and making it sound like a confession? Why wasn’t he able to control his stupid mouth around Alex Manes?

“If you say so. Note that I could have answered your stupid question with how are you only friend with the Evans twins, but I didn’t.”

“Fair enough.”

At some point along their way to Texas, Michael forgot they were working on a school project that Alex wasn’t even supposed to be involved in and lost himself in the easy back and forth they’d created. For once it was easy to talk and so he did it. He answered Mr. Summers’s silly questions and Alex’s sillier ones; he had a feeling the other boy was still holding back the trickiest of them and he was grateful. He had never wished to be able to be totally honest with a human as much as he did on that road-trip with Alex Manes.

So, it was simple answering truthfully to the next question.

“What do you hate the most?”

“Secrets.”

“Me too.”

For a moment the two boys were so wrapped up in their own thoughts - their own secrets - they didn’t notice that the cars in front of them were weirdly slowing down. They still had hours of driving to get to destination.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked the police officer who was pulling them over. 

“We’re closing down the highway. There was a bad car crash, I’m afraid you can’t go on till tomorrow at dawn, boys.” 

The cop walked away and Michael turned to Alex. It had been fun, up until then, weird and maybe unexpectedly so, but fun nonetheless. Now, Michael’s face wasn’t one of somebody’s who was enjoying themselves. And Alex read it right away because his next words were clearly meant to comfort and reassure him.  

“Well, it’s not that big of a deal; we’ll rest a bit and then we take off as soon as the highway opens tomorrow. We’re not far from Marathon, in less than an hour we’ll be there.”

Michael didn’t say anything, he just kept looking at the commotion down the road.

“Here,” Alex shoved his phone under Michael’s nose. “do you need to call the person you were supposed to meet to tell them you can’t make it? Ask them if they can talk to you tomorrow?”

“There’s no one waiting to talk to me,” Michael explained. And he was calm, really, but all of a sudden Alex looked kinda scared and worried, visibly uncomfortable at the idea of dealing with Michael’s latest disappointment. “in Marathon, in Roswell, on fucking Mars. No one, nowhere.”

“Then what were you…”

“Looking for? A fucking answer! It wasn’t too much to ask, right? Too much to hope for? But, no. Not today, Guerin! Not ever.” 

What he wanted to do was explode Maria’s windshield, what he did was close his eyes and redirect all that destructive energy inwardly. He felt the impact of the blast on his brain cells. 

“Look, I get it. It must be frustrating, but it’s not that bad.” Alex was still trying to get through him with logic, so he hadn’t completely scared him off yet. “Tomorrow, we’ll find what you’re looking for. Right now, we get the car out of the highway and figure out where to find something to eat and a place to spend the night, sounds good?” 

Michael sighed, a breakdown in the presence of a classmate wasn’t something he could really afford. “Front seat or back seat?”

“What?” 

Michael nodded at the back seat of Maria’s tiny car. “Do you have any preferences?”

Alex looked at him and then shook his head as if he was making a decision right there and then. “We’re not spending the night in here. Way too depressing. We’re…” Alex searched through his backpack for a second. “We’re going to that motel right there. Today was payday at the UFO Emporium, so I’m loaded.”

“Payday at Saunder’s is in two days, so I’m really not.”

“You can stay here if you want, but honestly I’m not all that thrilled of sleeping alone in that classy motel with, oh god! Themed rooms? You’re not let me go in there by myself. Come on, man.” 

“Okay, fine.”

As they drive to the motel Alex said in an obvious attempt at lightening the mood, “Why do I feel as if I, the abducted, was the one behind this trip?”

“Sorry, you’re right. And thank you, for be such a good sport.” Polite and formal was all Michael had the energy to offer, though.

“You’re welcome.” 

***

Fifteen minutes later, they ended up in the  _ Arabian Nights _ suite staring from the doorway at a circular bed looking like a prop from a porn set. It could have been much worse, Michael thought, listing in his mind the names of the other rooms they’d passed to reach their own. Yes,  _ Cats play  _ wasn’t somewhere he ever wanted to spend the night at. And, honestly, he had slept in way worst places; plural, because he had such a great life. 

Alex seemed weirded out, though, ever since they’d walked to the front desk and he’d felt the need to tell the guy that they needed a room to wait for the reopening of the highway. It had been odd; it was true, Alex Manes was a kind kid who got shit from too many classmates for who he - supposedly -was, but he was also the confident kid who never backed down when provoked. It was almost chilling the confidence with which he walked among his bullies and their taunting. 

Now he didn’t seem confident at all, with his eyes glued on the - frankly ridiculous and worth a stare or two - only bed in the room.

“I can sleep in the car,” Michael offered, hoping Alex’d say no because he didn’t want to stay alone right now. “or on the floor, it’s not a problem for me, really.”

“What?” Alex snapped out from wherever his thoughts had brought him to.

“We don’t have to share if it makes you uncomfortable,”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex said, finally entering the room and proceeding to dump on the bed a bagful of potato chips and candies from the vending machine in the hallway. “it’s just… Why?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not really that into Aladdin.”

Fortunately, at that Alex laughed and sat on the infamous bed, rummaging through the pile of more than healthy food that was going to be their dinner. Now that the other boy was visibly more relaxed, though, Michael remembered that he was in bad mood and why he was in a bad mood and hated himself for his pathological need to cater to anybody slightly in distress that made him forget in the first place. The image of the last puppy in a box waggling wildly its tail at every passerby crossed his mind. Pathetic.

“Are there any other questions in your stupid questionnaire?”

“A few,” said Alex, perplexed at Michael’s suddenly annoyed tone. “But we can finish it later; first we can eat something.”

“I’m sort of tired, so…”

“Oh, okay.”

Alex’s eyes travelled down the pages, fidgeting with the pen in his hand. Were they so bad? Michael opened a bag of chips.

“One?” Michael offered the bag to Alex who took a handful, glad for the distraction. Once again he felt the need to reassure him, “Your questions won’t make me cry or have a second breakdown, you know? I’m a big boy, I’ve heard all of that already. What happened in the car… I was just frustrated like you said, I’m fine.”

Alex lifted an eyebrow. “You stole a car. You’re not fine.”

“You came with me,” Michael pointed out, remembering the phone call of a few hours before and the last few sentences exchanged between Alex and his friend. “you’re not fine either.”

“Maybe so.”

“Do those last questions make  _ you _ uncomfortable?” He asked, trying to piece together what he overheard and what he remembered about Alex’s family and life. Three brothers, father was in the military, the parents were divorced? “Sorry, we orphans tend to make it all about ourselves. Or so says Max. I can bullshit something for the the remaining ones if you give me pen and papers.”    

“Don’t worry about me, Guerin. Who’s your favourite relative?”

_ My siblings.  _ “Uh… Wow. You went right there, uh?”

Alex offered him an apologetic shrug. It was clear he was trying to be polite, hesitantly navigating what you should say or not to someone who had nobody in this world, but little he knew what hurt Michael the most was not being allowed to have an answer. He  _ had _ siblings, after all. No, actually it was the thought of how his existence would be denied in Max and Isabel’s questionnaires that hurt like hell.

“What about you?”

“Grandma, from my mother side.” It was Michael’s turn to lift his eyebrow. “You know, when your father’s a dick and your mother has left you, you have to settle for the grandmas.”

“Brothers?”

“My father’s younger copies.”

“Uh, that’s bad.”

“Exactly,”

And they were laughing again, inexplicably as it might be. 

“We’re so messed up.”  

“Yeah,” Alex easily agreed and raised the can of coke he was drinking to toast to that. “What’s again the point of this project?”

“Mr. Summers is a nosy old man who’s bored out of his mind?” Michael took the can from the other boy’s hands and took a long sip before return it. Easily, like he would do with Max. “Don’t you have to call, like, your dick of a father and tell him where you are?”

“Are you kidding? He’s not home. I wouldn’t have been able to come with you if he was.”

“Make sense.”

“You? Do you have to call someone? Do you want to call Max and tell him you’re okay? He sounded pretty worried this afternoon.”

“Nah, he always worries. That’s just a Max thing.” Serves him right, since he could have come with him and be supportive for once. “So, have you got anything else you want to know about me?”

Alex sighed and Michael realized that the other boy wouldn’t have minded to talk about  _ that _ a little bit more, but too bad, he didn’t want to talk about Max. 

“Who do you envy?”

Fuck. Was Alex Manes a mind reader? Or the Universe just liked to laugh at him? 

The most honest, petty answer to that question would be every human on planet Earth. Every sentient being who had never had to worry about adapting to a world that wasn’t made for them to live in. But was it fair to envy something so different from you? Wasn’t it like envy your cat for its required eighteen hours a day of sleep? So that left it to Max. And he did envy him and his comfortable, adoptee’s life. Some days more than others. But he also loved him so much he was truly happy for him and his parents. It was complicated.  

And there was also the fact that Max was so much better than him at being human. Much too complicated. 

So he lied. A little bit, at least. “Every person who has ever been to space,”

“Is this what a genius dreams about, then? NASA? Being an astronaut?” 

“I can’t be an astronaut, genius or not,” Michael thought about all the medical examination one had to go through just to be admitted to the training program, he would be exposed in a second. He lied to Alex for the second time that day. “I’m color blind.”

He wasn’t. And he was going to go to space. 

“You?”

“You, Guerin,” Alex laughed, but this time it was forced and bitter. “You’ve just become the object of my envy.”

“How come?” Michael asked, puzzled.

“I’m not, color blind, I mean. If I was not even my father would be able to make me join the Airforce as he had planned since the day I was born.”

“Will you? Join the Airforce?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” Alex tugged uncomfortably at his sleeves. For a moment he seemed done with that whole question game, but then he looked up determined to continue. “Moving on, favorite book?”

“Man, how did you miss this one? I was ready to answer what keeps you up at night or some shit.”

“That’s the next one.”

“Really?”

“Answer, Guerin.”

“Okay, but don’t judge, all right? I don’t like novels or short stories or comic books or that kind of stuff, you know?”

“Fiction?”

“Fiction, right,” Michael nodded and then took a deep breath as if he was about to reveal one of his best hidden secret. He was not. “I read academic texts. Physics are my favorite. Also Math. And I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered but, no, there aren’t many in Roswell’s public library. Sucks to be me.”

“You really are a genius,”

“I try not to,” and it was a joke as much as it was the truth. He really tried not to be extraordinary, for Max and Isobel, in every aspect of his life.

“You’re worse than Liz” Alex shook his head, fondly. Michael wondered if it was because he was thinking about his best friend or if that day they’d become friends, too, and the sweet smile on his lips was a little bit because of him and his literary teste. “For future reference, I like Math, too, Guerin.”

Future reference? Was he expecting what? Starting tomorrow, to hang out and be nerds about Math together? Was it an invitation? 

“Last three.” Alex announced, before Michael could get himself an aneurism. 

“The worst?” He braced himself, now completely focused.

Alex gave a noncommittal shrug. “What’s the best thing that has ever happened to you?”

Oh, shit. That one was easy to answer, yet really difficult to phrase, the reason for this lying in the necessity of keeping everything that made him Michael Guerin, once again, hidden to the world. 

“Coming back to Roswell,” shit. Shit, shit, shit. People weren’t supposed to know he was the third child found in the desert along with Max and Isobel; people always forgot there was a third child wandering naked in the desert, as long as he didn’t remind them. Humanity really sucked, how could you forget a child?

Alex paused, taken by surprise.  _ Shit. Shit, shit, shit. _ “Roswell?” He asked, disbelief all over his face. “Roswell is the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”

“It’s when I met,” yeah, right,  _ met _ . “Max and Isobel. Before I was… It was lonely for a bit.” Years of loneliness, the answer to the opposite question would actually be easier.  

“I know the feeling,”

Michael had to suppress the urge to deny it. He was aware that only because he knew the literal thing, it didn’t mean humans couldn’t feel as alone as if they were the only one of their species in the world. But they were so many, sometimes it was easier to sympathise with endangered animals. Even plants. 

Alex was different, though. He could feel it, his loneliness was one and the same as his own. 

“Life, right? Sucks sometimes.” 

Alex met his eyes and somehow he knew it, he had just found someone like himself. How was it possible was a completely different question, he was a sixty-years-old looking like a seventeen human alien who had survived a spaceship crash, with a body buried in his past and what were generally considered superpowers, and Alex was what? A sad kid with a broken family? Still, there it was, the kind of connection he had longed for his entire life.

Michael broke the eye contact first; he wasn’t prepared for that. It was… he wasn’t prepared. 

“What are you most afraid of?”

Images of operating tables and surgical instruments flashed through his head. Cages. Angry men in white overalls. Max dead. Isobel tortured. Max tortured. Isobel dead. They all had those kind of dreams. All three of them. So scared, they all were so scared. Sometimes he thought fears was a fundamental part of their being, like humans had lungs and a pituitary gland their species of aliens had lungs - he was pretty sure about those - and a fear gland, right in the middle of their brain, controlling their every move, their every interaction with the world. 

So, what he was most afraid of? Torture. Death. Losing his siblings. Humans. Humans. Humans. But behind all of that, there was something else, something bigger and undefined, something scarier, something he wasn’t able to articulate. Something he wouldn’t. 

“I… I can’t…”

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to share your deepest secret, Guerin. You don’t owe Mr. Summers or Maria anything. We can always make up a lie. I can even turn all your other answers in lies, if you want.”

“I don’t,” Michael wasn’t sure why, but it was true. He didn’t want to lie. Today, yesterday, on that stupid questionnaire, ever.

“Okay, then,” Alex took a deep breath. “I’ll go first. Sometimes I fear that no matter how hard I’m fighting it, I’m already on the path of becoming like my father.”

“Your father is a real dick, uh?”

“You have no idea,”

Michael had known his fair share of dicks and he was almost certain about the type Alex’s father was, but he let go. “I’m sure you’re wrong, by the way. You’ll never be like him.”

“How come?” Alex sounded irked; Michael took a mentally note, people didn’t like to have their deepest fear dismissed. “You don’t know me. Or my father.” 

“You know what you don’t want to be, you’ve already figured it out more than most.”

“You always talk this much?” 

“About stuff like this? Almost never,” 

“I’ll blame it on 285 South’s air, then.”   

“Yeah,” Michael agreed, because the joke was lame but it had to be true in some way. All that road trip had felt weirdly intimate. It was his turn, though, and Michael tried to clear the mess that was in his head. It had always been hard work for him and another person’s stare zeroing on him shouldn’t be helping, but it was. “I fear there’s no place for me. Anywhere. A place to be completely myself, you know? Like, a home? Pretty lame, right?”

It was embarrassing to say it outloud, but also kind of freeing. Thank you, Mr. Summers if now you provided this lost teenage alien also with the professional help he clearly needed to sort out his messed up feelings and thoughts, it’d be most appreciated. 

“Maybe Texas is home,”

“Doubt it,” Driving down a highway wasn’t his way to head home, to reach that destination he had to follow something more similar to the direction to Neverland. “Last one?”

“Last one, ready?” Alex agreed and Michael nodded, at this point he was ready for anything. “Have you ever been in love?”

“That’s it?” Michael burst out laughing, relief washing over him. Answering this he could actually feel like a normal teen-ager. “No. No, I haven’t. You?”

“Me neither.” 

It was done. The questionnaire was filled in and there wasn’t anything else to say. As the silence stretched on, Michael found himself missing the cues Mr. Summers’s noisy questions had provided.

“Why have you left this one as last?” He asked because he had to say something. There wasn’t much left to eat and what else was left to talk about? Surrender to silence meant that the day was coming to an end and that tomorrow was basically already here and that what was now a wishful hope would turn in another heartbreak. He wasn’t ready be alone with his thoughts yet.

“Must have missed it,”

“Yeah well, it kinda ruined the build up,” Michael shoved half a chocolate bar in his mouth and tossed the other half to Alex, explaining, “After all that we deserve a treat.”

The other boy inspectioned the candy bar, suddenly hesitant. “Look, I know you said you were tired, but do you mind if I don’t turn off the lights for a bit? I have to study for Ms. Torres’s test…” 

“Oh right, me too.”

“Guerin, please. You probably stopped studying for tests in middle school.”

“Oh shut up, I obviously didn’t. And Ms. Torres, she’s cool, she always puts something special for me in her tests, so, take out your books, Manes.” 

“Are you not humoring me?” 

“No, I genuinely forgot. And I can’t fuck up if I want a full ride scholarship, which is my only way to go to college, so let’s get started.”

They ended up spending a good chunk of their night studying physics and learning some more things about each others that didn’t require talking. Alex discovered you didn’t need a calculator when you’d got a Michael Guerin with you. And it turned out Michael was actually able to study with someone else without losing it if that someone wasn’t Max and his total lack of understanding of anything that required numbers. Also, Alex Mane sang to himself to memorize formulas and it was pretty damn cute.  

***

The next morning, Michael should have been well rested, having slept in a real bed for once; it wasn’t the case, though. Nerves and anticipation and  _ oh my god I’m taking a human looking for alien stuff  _ didn’t allow him to enjoy the scratchy sheets and motel-comfortable mattress. His life was so sad. 

On the bright side, Alex had been the perfect sleep-buddy: he wasn’t a snorer or a blanket snatcher and when he had turn on his bedside lamp and used one of his notebooks to work on his exit-plan project, he never woke up.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Yeah, yeah. Great pillows.”

Alex shoot him one of his branded done-with-your-bullshit glare; it turned out it wasn’t the eyeliner that made them so effective. “Your eye bags are darker that my make-up.”

“Whatever,” Michael went for the driver seat, but realized he didn’t have the keys. “Uhm…”

“You’re not driving, Guerin. I’m sorry, but I’m not trusting you with getting the car back to Maria.”

“Are we still…”

“Of course, but we’re on a tight Marathon-Roswell route. Now, get in.”

Not having anything to do for what was left of the car trip wasn’t easy for Michael, although he wasn’t sure he would have managed to focus on driving if he had had to. He couldn’t stop thinking about every possible scenario, every way this trip could go very well or very wrong.

The only words they spoke were Michael’s directions that in less than an hour lead them to a strange domed house in the middle of the Texan desert.

No cars parked in front of it, some of the windows were broken, it was clearly abandoned for some time.

First pang of disappointment. But he could still make it work, no one in the house meant he could get in without problems, granted it probably also meant a house empty of what he came for.

“Is this the place?” Alex sounded unsure. It actually looked as bad as he thought, then.

Michael nodded, unable to do anything else.  

“I don’t think someone lives in here,”

“I’m not looking for someone,” Michael said once he managed to convince himself of that as well. There had never been any chance that some alien relatives of his was living in Texas, waiting for him with open arms and all the answers to his questions. No way. 

He pushed himself out of the car and headed towards the front door. Unexpectedly, Alex was right behind him. “You’re not coming. Go back in the car.”

“No,” 

“I don’t want you to commit a felony for me,”

“What’s one more, right?” Alex pushed past him and tried for the doorknob, “It’s closed, we should try with those windows.”

Instead of following him, Michael stayed where he was. Locks were his specialties. It took him the tiniest amount of concentration to work on this one; the bad signs were piling up, what were the odds someone was keeping something of that value like a piece of a legit spaceship in an abandoned house with only a shitty lock to protect it? 

Well, he had done the trip, it didn’t make sense to turn around and go home now. “Alex!” he called, “It’s open. Don’t vandalize the windows.”

Michael answered with a shrug to Alex’s confused look and let the both of them in. The place was a mess: piles and piles of old newspapers were scattered around what seemed to be the main room of the house; a chair was laying on its side on the floor next to one of the farthest window, and all around it pieces of glass. They weren’t the first to break in. But why the previous intruder had used a chair that clearly belong to that same house? Was it staged?

“This dude was clearly obsessed. Look,” Alex was holding out one of the newspapers, expectantly waiting for him to join him. “they’re all about the Roswell’s crash.” 

Michael looked at the newspaper in Alex’s hand and then grabbed the one now on top of the pile. And then the next one. And the next. And the next. Alex was right, they all were about the cash or about UFO sightings or other alien activities. It was the house of one of those mad fanatics that flocked into Roswell and revelled in the disaster that had killed his family. 

Michael tossed the newspapers on the floor and started looking everywhere for what he had come for. He had always knew there was a significant possibility that the trail he was following would lead him to one of those ridiculous humans, still the crushing truth was devastating. He hoped to find some sort of scientist, maybe a lab and something useful, something to start from. He wasn’t asking for the keys to what, incidentally, was rightfully his, but. Some research, something that told him he wasn’t just a delusional alien stranded forever on a foreign planet. 

He was going through the owner’s collection of plastic bottle caps in one of their cabinet, when Alex touched his shoulder to catch his attention. “What?”

“You don’t think there’s a chance this guy is still here? Like his body? Or his skeleton?”

“I told you, get back in the car,”

Also this time Alex didn’t listen to him, he left the newspapers and headed to the opposite side of the room.

As Michael opened another cabinet full of alien themed novels, Alex called from wherever he went to, “What are we even looking for? By the way, back there there are only a disgusting bathroom and the filthiest kitchen I’ve ever seen.”

“When I see it I’ll know it,”

“Guerin, we can’t stay here much longer,”

It was Alex’s tentative and sensible tone what made him snap, “I know! I know! I just can’t go back without anything!” He wasn’t going to cry, not in front of a schoolmate who already knew so much about him, so he kept going, “There are no double walls and this stuff is all garbage. It can’t be always me the foolish one who hasn’t yet understood how to not be let down!”  

Alex hold his gaze for the longest moment and Michael thought he was going to say he was sorry, the worst thing to say to him in that moment because it was Max and Isobel’s default response to all his failed theories, all his failed project. The other boy didn’t say it, though, he broke the eye contact and started moving around some of the stuff that littered the floor. “I’ll look for a trapdoor,”

Michael had never felt more grateful to be in the company of a human in his life.

“This floorboard moves,” Alex announced, excitement in his voice. Michael was beside him in moments. “It may just be a lousy board, this place is falling apart,”

Alex’s words sounded like a warning, the same that kept playing in Michael’s head, but he was already tearing it up. And then he froze. 

“Found anything? Guerin?”

There was only one thing in the space under the floorboard, a pendant attached to a string. It was etched with a symbol so familiar for a second Michael thought he could remember its name. A long time ago it used to happen with Max’s and Isobel’s faces, too. 

“Just dirt, man,” Michael reached in before Alex could take a peek a see the alien necklace. A piece of home, finally in his hands. “Let’s go back, there’s nothing here.”

Alex knew not to comment and Michael never hated more the secrecy policy the three of them lived by.

On the way home, they didn’t talk much. Alex was clearly leaving him space to grieve for this new disappointment of his and even though it was for a completely different reason, Michael was glad for it. His brain was just too full, too busy with the plethora of possibilities that that symbol represented. 

He felt bad when he practically bolted out of the car with a quick thank you to Alex, but he couldn’t help it, if he didn’t start working on some ideas his head was going to explode. 

In the end the pendant thing ended up a dead end, to this day it still sat in one the drawers of his lab waiting to give him all its answers, but when the next day Maria began to tease him for his fear of penguins Michael decided the trip to Marathon hadn’t be a complete failure. How could it have been? This time he came back to Roswell with a piece of home and maybe something more.   


End file.
